Strategic Universalisms and Dominican LGBT Activist Struggles for Civil and Human Rights

Drawing on the strategies employed by LGBT activists in the Dominican Republic, this essay seeks to theorize how strategic universalisms are mobilized as a form of agentive sociopolitical action. Delineating how universalization has historically been a tool of Catholic coloniality and empire, the author demonstrates the unique position of LGBT activists in the global South. In the context of the global South, and specifically a context that is heavily Catholic, universalized LGBT language enables Dominican activists to mobilize international, hemispheric, regional, and national resources in the struggle for civil and human rights. Dominican LGBT activists also simultaneously challenge who and what universalized concepts of the human and citizen can encompass.